Fine lines
Japanese ‘mingei’ explores the sometimes interchangeable worlds of art and crafts
By Jana J. Monji 09/04/2008
There is an imaginary and sometimes vague boundary separating art and craft. A modest exhibit, “Mingei East and West,” explores how the Japanese dealt with the concept of folk craft by creating a new term, mingei, and how that connects with Pasadena’s rich cultural history.
“Historically in Japan, there was no distinction,” says Kendall Brown, curator of the exhibit at the Pacific Asian Museum. “Their first contact with European ideas was at the Vienna World’s Fair.”
Because of the Western distinction between fine arts and crafts, “most of the Japanese pieces were in the crafts section” at this 1873 exposition, Brown says. In a sense, the Japanese were discriminated against, but then, this was true for other non-European artisans.
Where in Western culture the emphasis is on the ego of the artist and on personal ideas of Japanese culture revolved around the anonymous craftsman making art without signing it. Pieces were rustic, humble and meant to be functional, according to Brown.
Eventually, the Japanese caught on and had to coin a term for the fine arts and folk craft. Japan had only been opened up to Europeans (besides the Dutch) and Americans in the mid-1850s. The arts and crafts movement, inspired by John Ruskin, was a British and American aesthetic movement reacting against the soulless machine-produced items of the Industrial Revolution. Reaching its peak between 1880 and 1910, this movement was also influenced by art from Japan.
Another movement — art nouveau — was influenced by the writings of William Morris, which also inspired the arts and crafts movement. Japanese woodblock prints and Japonisme of the 1880s-1890s in Europe and America resulted in an aesthetic of flat perspective, strong colors and reference to organic forms in uncluttered designs.
When Yanagi Soetsu developed his theory of Japanese art, Western artists had already looked at Japanese art and the concept of mingei was a familiar adaptation — Westerners looking at Japanese art and Japanese looking at Western interpretations of Japanese artistic aesthetics.
Soetsu, a literary scholar and art critic, lived in England and under the influence of the English arts and crafts movement became a champion of handcrafted objects in opposition to the mass-produced pieces and Western-influenced artworks.
A plate made in Los Angeles by mingei potter Hamada Shoji as well as a sake bottle (made in Mashiko) are part of this exhibit’s modest 34 pieces. Shoji came to the US in the early 1950s and gave demonstrations at several American colleges, including USC. Shoji influenced young American potters such as Paul Soldner and Peter Voulkos, and the exhibit includes one piece each from them.
Of all the pieces, co-curator Yeonsoo Chee says her favorite is the plate by Shoji, who Chee called “one of Japan’s living national treasures.” That item, Chee said, “well expresses the principles and aesthetic of mingei. During his workshop held at USC in 1963, Shoji painted an organic calligraphic motif on the plate as a kind of mingei performance.”
In Pasadena, the bungalows of Charles and Henry Greene used elements of Japanese design in their wood joinery, deep eaves and fusing of interior and exterior space. Examples of this can be seen in the lantern from Gamble House by Frederick H.W. Leuders, on loan from Gamble House and USC. A leaded mouth-blown stained glass piece, “Three Carp,” on loan from the Judson Studios, is also on display.
This charming exhibit shows how interconnected the arts and craft movement in America and Europe was with the Japanese mingei movement and how to some degree met and melded into Pasadena’s own history.
“Mingei East and West” continues until Jan. 6 at the Pacific Asian Museum, 46 N. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena. For more information, call (626) 449-2742 or visit www.pacificasiamuseum.org.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT